Mango Season :-)

Over the last few weeks I have been watching my mangos grow with anticipation of when they would need to be picked. As the trees begun to buckle under the weight of the amount of mango's I had, it suddenly occurred to me I was going to need help and a huge saucepan to make chutney. Now, as everyone knows Google is god, however, on this occasion I thought I needed a human being to guide me on the mango picking process.

We made a call to our friendly garden centre guy, who popped round to advise us on the mangos and mangas as it appeared we had. Now if like me you are a mango novice, you will be forgiven for thinking there is only one type of mango. God, no there are loads, in fact we have five different types of mango's just to make life even more difficult.

After an hour long walk through the orchards, being advised on different mangos, when to pick them, how to pick them, where to store, them, and how to eat them I was left even more confused. However, never one to turn down a challenge, the guy had said that if we picked the mangos's he would sell them at the farmers market.

This was excellent news and meant that we didn't have to eat mangos for breakfast, lunch and dinner for the next 6 months...the harvesting began, and the crates begun to fill. Fruit picking is far harder than you imagine, and takes a considerable amount of balance and skill. You have to perch yourself on top of  a ladder with a cutter and a fruit picker, and attempt to get the mango in the fruit picker.

Needless to say that this event took far longer than anticipated, however we discovered some monster sized mango's which would be perfect for the market. Three hours later with our 6 crates filled we felt happy, until we reached the orchard gates turned and realised that we had not even touched the tip of the iceberg, and had thousands left to pick...